Hey there, Hiveswap and Homestuck fans! Ash here once again, and as promised, it’s time for another interview with the talented folks on Hiveswap’s development team! And don’t worry – if you missed the first interview, with our environment art director Rah, you can find it right here!

Who’s in the hot seat today? Why, it’s Adrienne, our lead animator! She can tell you far more about her work on the project than I ever could, so without further ado, I’m going to hand things off to her – after reminding you all to take good, long looks at the wonderful examples of her work peppered throughout this interview. Take it away, Adrienne!

Introduce yourself to the fans! What is your specific role on the Hiveswap team?

Hiya! My name’s Adrienne and I’m the lead animator for Hiveswap. I work together with Angela, the animation director, on roughs, cleanup, background and cutscene animation – anything that moves!

When and how did you get your start on the Hiveswap project?

I was hired full-time in January 2016, but I started doing some sprite conceptualization in late 2015 in tandem with [S]:Collide work (I animated sprites for the main big bads and did thumbnails for some of the sequences).

Tell us a little bit about your career background! How did you get your start in animation? Do you have any advice for others looking to enter this field?

Homestuck is basically my career background, ahaha.

I drew a lot of fan art for Homestuck after I finished catching up in late 2012. I got some attention from my work and I was asked to do comic pages for Paradox Space. Then I did work for the Homestuck calendar. Then I just became more involved in the comic after that by doing thumbnails, sprite animation, comic pages, snapchats… and now I’m working on the game… it’s been a wild ride from fan to full-time fan.

But as for how I got started in animation, a lot of it was influenced by anime and then DeviantArt while I was growing up. I grew up with Naruto and loved Norio Matsumoto’s work in it (he did the key animation for the best episodes!). And on DeviantArt, I liked following OCTs (Original Character Tournaments) and was particularly inspired by Unknown-Person’s work.

My general advice would be to value learning and exploration, and have less expectations of what life should hand you – it makes a lot of circumstances feel like a pleasant surprise and a good opportunity to learn something new. That’s how I felt when I stumbled into this field anyway, haha.

We’re making a video game, so of course the question must be asked: what’s your favorite game of all time, and what games are you playing currently (if any)?

Agh, what a difficult question. My most-played genre is colorful multiplayer shooters like Team Fortress 2, Overwatch, and Splatoon.

I finished Nier: Automata recently and now I’m working through Persona 5. But when I’m not working through that game, I play Breath of the Wild (most of my time is spent riding my horse around Hyrule – it’s very calming).

Are there any games that you currently use or have used as inspiration for your own animation work here on Hiveswap, or just in general?

I generally use Homestuck flash animations as an inspiration for Hiveswap sprite animations.

When I’m working on cutscenes, I look to Professor Layton stuff. I love how they integrated cutscenes with gameplay in that series.

As an animator, you must have some favorite cartoons and/or anime – tell us about them!

My recent favorite is Mob Psycho 100. The raw and rough quality of the animation for that one is my jam and the main cast is really inspiring. Avatar: The Last Airbender is still my top favorite for its epic storytelling and world-building. Naruto always has a special place in my heart since it’s one of the earliest things that inspired me to study animation.

Other big influential works for me were Princess Mononoke and How to Train Your Dragon.

What’s your workstation like? Do you like to listen to any particular kinds of music while you work? If so, tell us about it!

Here’s a picture of my workstation! If you squint at the bottom screen closely, you can see me taking the picture. But anyway… yeah. I am a little embarrassed for people to know how saturated my workstation is with inspirational quotes (there are papers of handwritten motivation on the walls behind me), but that’s just how I deal when the anxiety gets a little rough.

When I want to focus (usually for rough animation and concept art), I pull up an electronic or classical playlist on YouTube (and recently Spotify) or have no music playing at all. But for everything else (cleanup, in-betweens, etc.), I dig into different genres once in awhile but Imagine Dragons and Americana/folk stuff are my go-to. Acoustics sound really nice in these speakers.

Urgh… I don’t know, there’s so many that I love. In terms of like… cool and creative setup, [S] Cascade probably? [S] GAME OVER is cool too, because everyone died and the stakes just got so much higher. Oh! I just remembered [S] Make her pay as well!

This question is impossible.

(In the above animation timeline, the first frame is held for 4/24 of a second, the second frame for 2/24 of a second, the third for 2/24, and so on.)

Do you have a personal message you’d like to relay to all the Homestuck and Hiveswap fans out there?

Thank you for all your support, and for your patience in making it through the Giga/Mega/Omegapauses intact!

Where can people find more of your work? Link us to your own little corner(s) of the Internet!

Thank you, Adrienne! Well, folks, I hope you’ve enjoyed this second Hiveswap development team interview – and don’t worry, there are still plenty more to come!

Now that we’ve gotten things rolling, from here on out we’ll be bringing you a new interview every Wednesday, so be sure to check back every week for a new behind-the-scenes look at the development of Hiveswap and the talented people behind it!

1935-1963: may have been a child at somepoint were not sure
1964-1973: the big oopsie and resulting aftermath
1974-1983(the big chill): he just chilled for 9 years
1984-1994: building my epic minecraft fortress
1995: oh fuck i died
1996-1998: hell was full so im come back
1999: oh fuck i died 2
2000-2013(the second big chill): he just chilled for 13 years
2014: oh fuck i died 3 (for real this time)

Texas State of Mind by palominopupRating: NC-17Word Count: 69,800Summary: Dean Winchester was once an award winning country music star, but fame came too early. Now, he’s fifteen years sober and owns a ranch in western Texas. He’s happy with his life. He has horses, a nice herd of cattle and so what, if he’s alone. He tells his friends that he’s happily single. Back when he was touring, men and women threw themselves at him – but he knew they only wanted him for his fame.Cas Novak just won his fifth CMA award. He loves singing, but the touring was getting old. Living in a bus nine months out of the year was slowly destroying his creativity. He hasn’t written anything new in over a year. Then he hears an old song on the radio. He vaguely remembers the handsome singer and wondered whatever happened to him. Before he knew it, he’d written a new song. The only problem was…it was a duet. A duet that could only be sung with a voice like Winchester’s.After locating the man’s ranch, Cas makes a surprise visit. Will he be able to talk Dean into joining him on stage after all these years? Will the two men find what they’ve been looking for all their lives – someone to share a future with?

Of all the people that Dean expected to drive up to his Texas ranch, Cas Novak was at the bottom of his list. Also at the bottom was returning to a world that chewed him up and spit him out (with some help from John’s A+ parenting). But this fic is not about Dean’s past, though we do get a few glimpses. Instead it’s about how you move forward and still hold the things you love dear. In this case, Dean cast aside his love of creating music. Out in rural Texas, any other love he might need is also pretty remote. All that changes when Cas’ tour bus drives up that gravel lane…and Cas buys a horse.

You heard me! Dean wants nothing to do with the music industry and the only way Cas can keep him talking is by buying a horse. And eventually, ya gotta learn how to ride that horse, right? This is a wonderful summer read that has longing gazes, just missed moments and of course skinny dipping in the creek. There are a few difficult moments for our guys, but for the most part this fic is fluffy, sexy cowboys doin’ what they do best.

If you enjoyed the fic, please drop by the archive (AO3) and let the author know with your comments and/or kudos!

Based on the recent landlocked-regions-removed post, imagine if no land on Earth was ever more than 3 miles from a body of water. Consider how this would take shape on the planet's surface, as well as the effect this would have on humans, our culture, and the various aspects of such. (If wanted, I can give my own take on this premise.)

Referring to this post

But with even less land.

Well, a world like that couldn’t possibly support agriculture or even the plants to create agriculture. But fishing would be a huge part human life in this world, as it would be the main source of food.

In that case, assuming civilizations could develop at all, trade routes, both across oceans, and between oceans through canals on land traders, would be necessary for civilization. The people who owned the ports and canals would be the richest, and likely become the kings/rulers of this world.

Culture would be based around the sea, obviously. A lot more folklore would be based on the relationship between the sea and land. Places where lots of small seas converge would be richer and have a more polytheistic worldview as many seas would have many different types of lifeforms.

Meanwhile places where there’re only two seas, an in-sea and out-sea, such as West Africa, would have a more dualist worldview. Their world would be stuck between two forces of nature. A big wave from either sea could wipe them out.

Finally, the ethnic diversity of this world would be small. Not only because of the small population, but also because with so little land, spreading throughout the world becomes more linear.

There would probably be the ‘land peoples’. Tribes and kingdoms that lived on a certain strip of land for many generations. And the ‘sea peoples’, which immigrated around the world by boats, and are more spread out across a lot of land. They would be minorities around most land strips, but their sea access could lead to them being the rulling class wherever they lived, creating a sort of ‘sea empire’ without a central authority.

Castiel Novak: Tomb Raider by emwebb17Rating: M/light NC-17Word Count: 51,700Summary: When disgraced archaeologist Dean Winchester goes missing, his brother hires survivalist Castiel Novak to track him down. With only Dean’s notes and journal to guide him, Castiel follows Dean’s trail across the globe, discovering long lost treasures and clues leading to the mythical Godland. As Castiel learns more about his target, he starts to develop feelings for a man he’s never even met. Now all he has to do is find him.

Adventure, discovery and mystery shape this amazing tale that defies tagging. When I first took a peek at AO3, I thought - Gee, looks like the author wants to keep us in suspense. Then after I finished this engaging story and tried to tag it, I understood her dilemma! This story defies tagging, in part because like Castiel’s quest to find Dean and Dean’s obsession with finding the Godland, it is all about the journey and not the destination. And it is one helluva a journey.

We start in a cafe in Austin, Tx where Castiel is tasked by a desperate Sam to find his missing brother. Through careful sleuthing and high adventure, Cas uses Dean’s journal and research notes to unravel the mystery of the Enochians and their lost civilization, enabling him to retrace Dean’s steps and hopefully find the missing archeologist. Even though we don’t meet Dean in the flesh until very late in the story, his journal entries make it seem like he is standing right there. The author’s research is epic - I was compelled to look at google maps just to see what she described!!! There are some pretty wild and surreal twists but damn, it was a fun ride!

If you enjoyed the fic, please drop by the archive (AO3) and let the author know with your comments and/or kudos!

Theonite is a sort of Harry Potter-ish YA action series about a (white) girl with superpowers, who grows up hiding her abilities from her parents and feeling super alienated from her community because of it (seemingly an allegory for kids hiding their sexuality and/or other aspects of their identity from closed-minded family, a la X-men). The girl (Joan) feels completely alone until she meets another kid with elemental powers (an Indian kid named Daniel Thundyil, who can control fire) - although it turns out that the only reason he has powers is that he comes from a different dimension where superpowers are common.

Daniel is the son of a superhero, who came to Earth to hunt a god-like storm-making supervillain. Obviously, Joan gets pulled into the Thundyil’s action/ mystery/ crime-fighting drama. I won’t spoil the details, but it eventually leads to the characters crossing into the other dimension, where Joan assumes that she will be more accepted than on Earth because everyone has elemental powers like hers.

The ‘twist’ (idk if that’s really what to call it) is that all the people with powers in this other universe are poc (Africans control fire, East Asians control wind and water, etc.). White Europeans are the only ethnic group without genetically inherited powers, and this has resulted in a society where West Africans (the major world power from colonial times) is culturally dominant across the globe and white people are looked down on.

We get to learn about this African-dominated world through the POV characters who live in it (including this blacksmith, painter, Fiki, who is possibly my favorite character of all time in anything ever) as Joan and Daniel put together a sort of rag-tag superhero team of under-qualified misfits to solve the series’ big mystery.

The way that Joan has to confront and learn to deal with the institutionalized racism against white people is so important, and really gets to the heart of what it feels like to be marginalized. Like, I feel like every white person should read this book for that experience alone.

Holy hell, this was a long answer! I told you I was bad at summaries. You were warned!

Kakashi doesn’t think he compares to Jiraiya-sama, not in the least. The man has a truly enviable grasp on subtle turn of phrase and the greatest eye for folds and drapes that hint in ways even more erotic than showing. Jiryaiya-sama is a master of his craft, let no one dare deny it.

(Else Kakashi will fight you. In the face.)

The thing is, though, that Jiraiya-sama is gleefully, viciously, irrevocably straight. (Or, if you’re truly a connoisseur of his works and a bit of a genius gifted in looking beneath-the-beneath, tragically, desperately, and obliviously closeted.) And while Kakashi is and always will be ever so fond of the way Machiko-chan tilts her head just so when Seichiro-sama nibbles just there, Kakashi just can’t help but think that the whole third chapter of Violence #5 would have been greatly improved if Satoshi-kun had just kicked Seichiro’s feet out from under him and promptly shoved a hand down his hakama.

It’s nothing more than an idea for a while, an odd little brain-doodle of a what-if that bubbles up in the long stretches of boredom nobody tells you make up 85% of ANBU ops. ‘Would there have been a war,’ he wonders on day 5 of what ends up being an 18 day stakeout, if neither feudal lords felt the young prince had wronged their busty daughters? ‘Would Satoshi still have died tragically stepping in front of a poisoned needle meant for his dear childhood friend?’ he ponders once he’s lost and/or killed his tail and settled in for the 18 hour run back to Konoha. 'Could everyone have the happily ever after that never exists in real life?’ he contemplates over a bowl of high-calorie mush meant to prod his chakra coils into filling up faster.

“What about Machiko!” cries Ebisu, a berk of a chuunin made just tolerable by being a fellow enthusiast. “Where does her happy ending come in?” Kakashi thinks long and hard on that one for about 8 seconds.

“Clearly loyal, supple handmaiden Hana would sweetly ease her woes.”

The two men contemplate that for a blissful second, before Kakashi remembers that the chuunin currently possesses all the paperwork required to spring him from the prison Konoha calls a hospital.

It becomes kind of a thing a month later, when Kakashi is back in his least favorite place, damaged enough that there’s no escaping through the window. He’s trapped for the foreseeable future and granted no distractions but the pen and forms required for an after action report.

He doesn’t do the report. He’s got a reputation to live down to.

A week after that, paperwork-chuunin Inuzuka Hige runs him to ground in training ground 15, waving his not-report like a declaration of war. “If you leave this here I will gut you like a boar,” she roars and in fear for his balls, Kakashi turns out ten thousand words of slow, sweet, 'incredibly glad we both somehow survived’ hardcore yaoi fix-it in less than a day.

It becomes absolutely a thing after that. There are message boards in admin building basements where first his, then others’, hand-scribbled fiction is pinned up, and tiny post-its of praise are pinned up under it. It seems like the village had been waiting poised on an exhale for someone, anyone, to start the tide. Because then there is a flood, spanning volumes and series and worlds, scratched on anything from expensive calligraphy paper to the margins of a BBQ menu and distributed on an old clunker of a photocopier that in some accounting somewhere has been listed as both non-functional and disposed.

It becomes so much more than him.

Someone starts illustrating, and someone else starts coloring. And yet someone else starts writing fictional derivations of Kakashi’s own derivation and this, he thinks, is what it must feel like to be happy.

(One writer’s time-travelling, world-building epic is so goddamn astounding he finds himself first in line next to the photocopier exactly on time every Tuesday morning like clockwork to get his print.)

His nose isn’t always buried in Icha Icha any more, though you’d have to know him better than most do to even notice behind the lurid orange covers he tacks on everything. He’s still unflinchingly loyal to the classic originals but now his horizons have been blown wide open. There’s a new wave of pornography storming across the hidden continent and Kakashi has to stay at the forefront of it all to remain a big name in fan-writing. Viva la fucking revolution!

(Oh my Kentarou-kun, what could you and Takeshi-kun possibly do with those soft, smooth tentacles you’ve sprouted? We should all find out.)

Paradox: Nothing much just looking for potential members to join our team.

Reaper: You have two literal GODSat your side. What more do we need?

Paradox: There’s more to a battle than just raw power Reaper. It’s also a numbers game.

Epic: Yeah that makes sense.

Reaper: Alright fair enough. So… What now?

Paradox: Guys wanna go grab lunch?

Reaper: YES!

Epic: FUQING FINALLY!

Epic & Reaper: So who’d you pick anyways?

Epic: Bruh.

Paradox: Hehe. Lets just say they are quiet skilled and talented.

this was fun but ultimately hard… again. FUCK. in any case I love the whole idea of teams and stuff so i decided to try one of my own. All characters are owned by their respective creators and all art here is my own.